E 

175 

.7 

H9 


THE  SERVICE  OF  STATISTICS  TO  HISTORY 


By  CHARLES  H.  HULL,  PH.  D. 


[Reprinted  from  Quarterly  Publications  of  the  AMERICAN  STATISTICAL 
ASSOCIATION,  March,  1914] 


THE  SERVICE  OF  STATISTICS  TO  HISTORY 


By  CHARLES  H.  HULL,  PH.  D. 


[Reprinted  from  Quarterly  Publications  of  the  AMERICAN  STATISTICAL 
ASSOCIATION,  March,  1914] 


H3 


30  American  Statistical  Association.  [30 

THE  SERVICE  OF  STATISTICS  TO  HISTORY.* 

BY  CHARLES  H.  HULL,  PH.  D.,  Professor  of  American  History,  Cornell 

University. 


When  your  representative  honored  me  with  an  invitation  to 
take  part  in  this  discussion,  I  told  him  (what,  indeed,  he  very 
well  knew)  that  I  had  neither  statistical  experience  nor  statis- 
tical knowledge,  and  had  paid  but  slight  attention  to  the  multi- 
farious discussion  upon  the  relation  of  history  to  the  newer 
social  disciplines.  1  could  give,  therefore,  only  my  personal 
impressions  upon  the  service  of  statistics  to  history,  and  those 
but  provisionally.  He  assured  me  that  more  was  not  expected, 
and  I  shall  not  attempt  more. 

If  the  second  part  of  this  morning's  program  had  been  sub- 
mitted to  the  founders  of  the  American  Statistical  Association, 
it  would  have  perplexed  them  sorely.  Seventy-five  years  ago 
the  word  "economics,"  as  a  substitute  for  political  economy 
(or  a  criticism  upon  it)  was  just  making  its  way  into  the 
language,  under  the  dubious  aspices  of  those  most  unstatistical 
persons,  Thomas  Cartyle  and  Waldo  Emerson.  The  term 
"biology,"  recently  invented  in  Germany,  had  acquired,  as 
yet,  no  other  meaning,  among  those  who  knew  it  in  English  at 
all,  than  that  of  a  particularly  vivid  form  of  biography — the 
story  of  a  man 's  life  as  it  might  be  talked  rather  than  written. 
The  hybrid  "sociology"  was  still  unbegotten.  That  statistics 
should  ever  serve  such  strange  gods,  might  well  have  given  the 
founders  pause.  Towards  history,  however,  they  could  have 
turned  with  more  confidence.  Both  as  a  word  and  as  a  subject 
history  was,  in  their  day,  already  venerable,  and  still  respect- 
able; and  the  service  which  statistics  might  render  it  was,  to 
their  minds,  entirely  clear.  In  the  "Address  put  forth  by  the 
Association  at  the  period  of  its  first  establishment,  "t  its 
spokesman,  the  poly  graphic  Professor  Edwards  of  Andover 
Theological  Seminary,  had  defined  statistics  as  "the  ascertain- 
ing and  bringing  together  of  those  facts  which  are  fitted  to 

*Paper  read  at  the  seventy-fifth  anniversary  meeting  of  the  American  Statistical  Association,  Boston, 
Mass.,  February  14,  1914. 

fThis  address  is  printed  in  "Constitutions  and  By-La  ws  of  the  American  Statistical  Association,  with  a 
List  of  Officers,  Fellows  and  Members.  Boston:  1844." 


Library 

31]  The  Service  of  Statistics  to  History.  31 

illustrate  the  conditions  and  prospects  of  society."  It  fol- 
lowed that  "every  subject  in  truth  forms  a  part  of  statistics," 
and  he  naturally  concluded  that  the  labors  of  the  Association 
should  prove  "of  inestimable  value  to  the  future  historian  in 
our  own  and  other  lands."*  This  sweeping  conception  of 
statistics,  quite  in  the  temper  of  contemporary  Germany  prac- 
tice, was  promptly  illustrated  by  the  contributions  which  the 
Association's  secretary,  the  Rev.  Joseph  B.  Felt,  made  to  the 
first  volume  of  its  '  *  Collections. ' '  They  are,  doubtless,  known 
to  many  of  you,  and  with  them  in  mind  it  becomes  easy  to 
understand  why  Schloezer 's  awkwardly  translated  dictum  f  that 
"statistics  is  history  in  a  state  of  progression;  statistics  are 
history  at  a  stand,"  should  have  met  Professor  Edwards 's  full 
approval,  and,  as  we  may  infer  from  Colonel  Wright's  fond- 
ness for  the  neater  version  of  the  same  dictum,  that  "history 
is  past  statistics,  statistics  present  history,"  have  become,  for 
a  time,  almost  a  part  of  the  Association's  creed. 

Today,  however,  the  situation  is  reversed.  Regarding  the 
nature  and  extent  of  the  service  which  statistics  may  render  to 
economics,  to  sociology,  or  even  to  biology  there  is,  I  fancy,  less 
dispute  than  now  exists  regarding  the  serviceability  of  statis- 
tics for  the  purposes  of  the  historian.  To  understand  this 
change  we  must  appreciate  that  "history"  and  "statistics" 
are  words  of  variable  and  even  ambiguous  meaning,  and  must 
determine  in  what  meanings  we  will  take  them  for  our  present 
purpose. 

History  is  an  old  word,  blurred  by  careless  handling.  Of 
its  many  meanings  two  only  need  engage  our  attention.  Some- 
times "history"  denotes  a  method,  sometimes  a  subject.  The 
historical  method  of  ascertaining  and  presenting  past  events 
is,  in  a  general  way,  familiar  to  us  all.  We  readily  appreciate 
its  applicability  to  various  subjects,  and  the  slightest  inquiry 
into  historiography  would  show  that  the  historical  method  has, 
in  fact,  found  most  diverse  applications.  But  the  interest  and 
importance  of  its  application  to  the  past  acts  of  man  as  a 

*"  Constitution,"  etc.,  pp.  13,  21,  23. 

t/Wd,  p.  13.  Achenwall  had  written:  "  die  Lehre  von  der  Statsverfassung  eines  oder  mehrerer  einzelnen 
Staten,  ist  die  Statistik."  Schloezer,  who  brought  out  a  seventh  enlarged  edition  of  the  Abriss  (Goettingen, 
1790)  after  Achenwall's  death,  inserts  in  the  text,  after  "Statistik,"  a  parenthetical  explanatory  "(Staat- 
skunde),"  and  adds  in  a  note:  "  Staatskunde  [d.  h.  Statistik]  ist  eine  stillstehende  Statsgeschichte;  so  wie 
diese  eine  fortlanfende  Staatskunde."  Pt.  l,v.5. 


32  American  Statistical  Association.  [32 

social  being,  his  wars,  arts  and  industries,  his  church  and 
state,  so  far  outweigh  all  other  applications  of  the  historical 
method  that,  as  a  subject,  history  has  come  to  mean  a  reasoned 
narrative  of  man's  social  doings  in  the  past,  or  of  some  of 
them.  Like  the  dyer's  hand,  the  historian's  method  is  subdued 
to  what  it  works  in;  and  history  as  a  method  has  been  pro- 
foundly affected  both  by  the  antiquity  of  its  beginnings,  in 
an  age  of  intellectual  naivety  and  by  the  human  character  of 
the  subjects  which  historians,  following  in  some  measure  the 
pattern  set  by  their  predecessors,  have  found  themselves  called 
upon  to  deal  with. 

Statistics  also  has  two  meanings,  similarly  related.  Statis- 
tics is  a  scientific  method  of  wide  applicability.  Statistics  are 
a  body  of  facts  and  inferences — usually  but  not  necessarily 
social — collected  and  interpreted  according  to  that  method. 
We  have,  then,  two  methods,  the  historical  and  the  statistical, 
each,  by  preference  applied,  as  it  happens,  to  the  same  or 
similar  matters,  producing,  the  one  history  as  a  subject,  the 
other  statistics  as  a  subject.  The  question  remains  to  be 
answered,  whether  the  two  methods  are  as  similar  as  the  sub- 
jects to  which  they  are  applied. 

Statistics  is  a  newer  word  than  history,  and  its  method  is 
even  newer  than  its  name.  Achenwall,  who  invented  the  name 
in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  referred  it  to  the 
Italian  word  statista,  a  statesman;*  and  for  him,  as  for  his 
follower  Schloezer,  statistics  meant  a  general  account  of  con- 
temporary affairs,  of  the  national  fabric  in  widest  sense,  such 
as  might  be  of  use  to  a  public  man:  Keltic's  "Statesman's 
Year  Book"  is  a  modern  English  example.  Robert  Mills 's 
"Statistics  of  South  Carolina"  (1826)  and  George  White's 
"Statistics  of  Georgia"  (1849)  are  earlier  examples  from 
American  practice.  The  statistics  of  these  compilers,  which 
are  also  the  statistics  of  the  American  Association  "at  the 
period  of  its  first  establishment, ' '  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
any  conscious  method.  Their  collections  were  quite  miscella- 
neous, not  to  say  capricious.  They  did,  indeed,  show  a  prede- 
liction  for  such  data  as  might  be  expressed  "in  terms  of 
number,  weight  and  measure,  "t  But  they  were  by  no  means 

*G.  Achenwall.    Abriss  der  neuesten  Staatswissenschaft  der  beutigen  vornehmsten  europaischen  Reiche. 
1749.    Einleitung. 
tSir  William  Petty.    Political  Arithmetick.    1690.    Preface. 


33]  The  Service  of  Statistics  to  History.  33 

restricted  to  such,  and  seldom  used  them  comparatively  or  in 

mass  measurement.  B^BSCTOft  LibrSTf 

As  a  method,  then,  statistics  took  itssKape  within  the' past 
seventy-five  years,  and  it  fell,  consequently,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  those  instrumental  devices  which,  as  applied  by  all  the 
natural  sciences,  have  imparted  to  nineteenth  century  thought 
its  most  pronounced  character.  The  first  to  apply  the  familiar 
method  of  the  natural  sciences  in  the  new  field  of  statistics  was, 
perhaps,  the  Belgian  astronomer,  Quetelet.  Instead  of  con- 
cerning himself  with  such  specific  details  as  interested  the 
antiquarian  mind  of  Dr.  Felt,  Quetelet  employed  the  so-called 
Law  of  Large  Numbers.  In  order  to  count  and  compare  the 
numerous  units  involved,  he  arranged  them  in  classes,  within 
each  of  which  all  the  units,  whatever  their  individual  diver- 
sities, were  assumed  to  be  alike  for  his  enumerative  purposes. 
He  thus  came  to  deal  in  the  field  of  statistics,  as  all  modern 
sciences  do  in  their  several  fields,  with  typical  abstractions. 
These  are,  no  doubt,  of  great  instrumental  value  for  scientific 
purposes ;  but  they  can  claim  to  find  no  exact  counterpart  in 
any  real  object.  None  of  us  has  ever  met  "the  statistical 
man"  any  more  than  "the  economic  man."  They  are  two  of 
the  many  convenient  fictions  of  science.  By  the  application, 
then,  of  scientific  method  to  statistical  facts,  Quetelet  began, 
about  the  time  when  this  Association  was  founded,  to  deduce 
such  general  social  laws  as  seemed  to  him  to  warrant  some 
measure  of  quantitative  prediction  about  society  as  a  whole, 
though  he  was  careful  to  say*  that  they  implied  nothing,  of 
necessity,  as  to  any  particular  member  of  society.  The 
measure  of  his  success  in  what  he  came  to  call  "social 
physics  "f  may  have  been  somewhat  less  than  he  anticipated, 
but  it  was  at  least  sufficient  to  make  most  modern  statisticians 
his  conscious  or  unconscious  followers.  Statistics  had  found 
their  method,  which  is  the  general  method  of  the  natural 
sciences.  It  operates,  as  the  sciences  all  do,  with  "laws" 
which  apply  to  aggregates  and  averages  (or  other  types)  but 
not  to  the  peculiarities  of  individuals.  A  rhombohedral 
crystal  of  oxide  of  silicon  with  trapezohedral  tetartohedrism 

*Recherches  sur  la  loi  de  croissance,  pp.  1,  2;  Recherches  sur  la  penchant  au  crime,  pp.  2,  80. 
fPhysique  sociale,  par  Ad.    Quetelet.    Bruxelles.    1869.    The  first  version  of  this  book,  published  in 
1834,  he  called  Sur  1'  homme  et  le  de"veloppement  de  ses  facult6s,  ou  essai  de  physique  sociale. 


34  American  Statistical  Association.  [34 

is  quartz, — and  there  you  are.  It  may  be  large  or  small, 
green,  purple,  yellow,  or  pink.  It  is  still  quartz. 

Following  statistics,  the  newer  social  disciplines,  folk-psy- 
chology, sociology,  and  the  rest,  have  developed  their  methods 
under  the  same  influence  of  all-conquering  natural  science, 
whose  "glory  fills  the  world  with  loud  report."  It  was  inevi- 
table, then,  that  history,  the  oldest,  of  the  social  disciplines, 
should  be  called  upon  to  mend  the  ancient  error  of  its  ways 
and  by  installing  a  modern  scientific  outfit  of  general  laws  and 
instrumental  abstractions,  to  elevate  itself  to  the  rarefied 
atmosphere  where  true  predictive  science  dwells.  The 
trumpet  of  this  summons  gave  no  uncertain  sound.  Comte 
was  confident ;  Buckle  was  cock-sure ;  and  the  modern  materi- 
alistic philosophy  of  history  threatens  the  bourgeois  historian 
with  the  same  extinction  in  which  socialism  is  presently  to 
engulf  all  capitalistic  institutions,  unless  he  shall  straightway 
forsake  his  abhorrent,  and  probably  venial  pretense  of  an 
interest  in  the  deeds  and  characters  of  individual  men,  and 
shall  concern  himself  solely  with  the  class  struggle  and  the 
necessary  laws  of  its  evolution. 

"Evolution,"  ladies  and  gentlemen,  is  the  hocus-pocus  of 
the  scientific  nineteenth  century,  just  as  "nature"  was  the 
hocus-pocus  of  the  revolutionary  eighteenth,  and  "society" 
promises  to  become  the  hocus-pocus  of  a  sympathetic  twentieth. 
Man,  no  doubt,  will  carry  on,  as  he  did  through  preceding 
centuries. 

Meanwhile  for  the  mere  historian  to  object  when  others, 
chiefly  non-historians,  seek,  in  the  sacred  name  of  science,  to 
apply  their  methods  to  a  subject-matter  which  he  has  long 
dealt  with  in  a  manner  lamentably  unscientific,  would  be  at 
once  arrogant  and  futile.  But  without  claiming  the  privilege 
of  such  folly,  he  may  perhaps  justly  ask,  he  may  even  be 
generously  allowed,  to  determine  for  himself  what  sort  of 
results  he,  as  a  historian,  will  aim  to  achieve.  And  in  so  far 
as  the  methods  of  natural  science  may  be  incapable  of  reach- 
ing that  sort  of  results,  he  may,  for  his  part,  abstain  from  em- 
ploying them,  not  worrying  himself  unduly  about  the  pains 
and  penalties  that  shall  in  consequence  be  denounced  upon 
him.  If,  by  the  use  of  scientific  laws,  results  superior  to  his 
shall  be  produced,  recognition  will  surely  reward  the  achieve- 


35]  The  Service  of  Statistics  to  History.  35 

ment,  and  the  mere  historian  will  not  be  the  last,  let  us  hope, 
to  acknowledge  the  new  day.  Meanwhile,  however,  we  must 
take  history  as  precedent  and  practice  have  shaped  it,  histor- 
ians as  in  consequence  they  are.  The  serviceability  of  the 
statistical  method  for  the  past  and  present  purpose  of  such 
persons  is  the  subject  of  our  immediate  enquiry. 

The  majority  of  intelligent  historians  (if  any  historians  may 
be  allowed  to  be  intelligent)  would  agree,  I  fancy,  that  the 
statistical  method,  being  a  specific  type  of  the  method  of  na1 
ural  science,  is  not  their  proper  method  and  cannot  become 
their  principal  tool.  For  the  ultimate  units  with  which  the 
historian  deals  are  not  atoms,  or  any  sort  of  instrumental 
abstractions,  whose  individual  differences,  if  any  exist,  may  be 
ignored,  but  they  are  men  and  the  deeds  of  men.  All  social 
phenomena  are  at  bottom  human  deeds,  with  qualitative  differ- 
ences, each  from  each.  These  it  is  the  characteristic  business 
of  the  historian  to  study.  Men  and  the  differing  deeds  of  men, 
as  they  present  themselves  for  historical  contemplation,  seem 
to  him  too  complex  and  too  variously  conditioned  to  be  sub- 
jected to  the  concept  of  general  law,  as  the  natural  sciences 
derive  that  concept  from  the  observation  of  phenomena 
assumed  to  be  uniform.  He,  for  his  part,can  seldom  find,  and 
may  never  assume,  that  his  observation  of  one  man  is  as  signi- 
ficant as  his  observation  of  another.  He  must  rather  assume 
the  existence  among  men  and  their  acts  of  those  qualitative 
differences  which  are  a  fundamental  fact  of  all  organic  life. 
This  involves  him  in  no  quarrel  with  science.  Science  too 
freely  confesses  the  qualitative  differences  of  individuals. 
But  for  the  purposes  of  science  they  are  overlooked  because 
they  are  of  negligible  importance.  For  the  purposes  of  his- 
tory, however,  their  importance  is  often  the  greatest. 

Let  me  illustrate.  On  the  first  day  of  November  in  the  year 
1700  there  died  of  some  obscure  fever  at  his  sumptuous  dom- 
icile in  Madrid  a  married  Spaniard  in  the  thirty-ninth  year  of 
his  age,  whose  entire  adult  life  had  been  passed  in  public  office. 
These,  I  believe,  are  all  the  data  that  a  Korosi  would  need  to 
locate  the  deceased  in  that  social  group  which  should  give  full 
weight  to  the  statistical  significance  of  his  death.  A  Eanke 
notes,  however,  that  the  death  of  Charles  the  Bewitched, 
neither  entirely  king  nor  completely  imbecile,  brought  on  the 


36  American  Statistical  Association.  [36 

War  of  the  Spanish  Succession,  and  that  his  reluctance  to 
make  a  will  betimes  gave  opportunity  for  intrigues  which 
affected  the  European  balance  of  power  for  a  century  there- 
after. 

The  historian,  then,  cannot  rely  upon  the  statistical  method, 
or  upon  any  similar  method,  as  a  means  of  determining  the 
significance  of  a  specific  event.  No  more  can  he,  by  the  use 
of  statistical  laws,  or  by  any  other  method  of  prognosis,  under- 
take to  tell  what  specific  incidents  of  historical  interest  must 
happen.  If  prediction  be  the  distinguishing  mark  of  science, 
the  historian  must  confess  with  humility,  but  let  us  hope  also 
with  tranquility,  that  he  is  not  a  scientific  man.  His  method 
of  explanation  is  a  retrogressive  analysis.  Diagnosis,  not 
prognosis  is  his  art.  As  the  physician  applies  his  skill  and  ex- 
perience to  specific  cases,  not  to  categories,  and  is  satisfied  to 
determine  what  ailment  produced  the  symptoms  that  he  finds 
in  his  present  patient,  leaving  the  question  quite  open  whether 
certain  similar  symptoms,  in  a  patient  of  a  different  tempera- 
ment, are  due  to  the  same  or  different  disease,  so  the  historian 
seeks  to  explain  his  events  one  by  one,  each  as  an  individual 
case  for  itself.  Laws,  deduced  by  inference  from  other  cases, 
are  for  him  never  demonstrative,  but  at  most  hueristic.  They 
may  serve  to  turn  his  attention  to  a  probable  cause  but  he  will 
not  be  satisfied  that  it  is  the  real  cause  until  he  has  examined 
it  individually.  In  this  the  method  of  history  differs  radically 
from  the  method  of  statistics.  The  method  of  statistics  is,  by 
consequence,  only  of  indirect  service  to  the  historian. 

May  I  sum  up  my  conclusions  so  far  by  rewriting  a  state- 
ment of  a  former  President  of  this  Association  ?  ' '  The  student 
of  social  science,"  said  Colonel  Wright,*  "uses  the  results  of 
statistical  enquiry  because  he  recognizes  with  the  German 
Schlosserf  that  ' statistics  is  history  ever  advancing,'  and  that 
if  he  wishes  to  ...  keep  himself  fully  and  thoroughly 
informed  of  progress  in  every  direction,  he  must  use  the  statis- 
tical or  historical  method."  The  position  which  I  have  tried 
to  present  this  morning  would  be  better  expressed  by  saying 
instead:  The  historian,  as  a  student  of  social  phenomena, 

*Practical  Sociplogy.    5th  ed.    1904.    P.  8. 

fThis  apparent  confusion  between  Friedrich  Christoph  Schlosser,  the  historian  (1776-1861),  and  August 
Ludwig  Schloezer,  the  statistician  (1735-1809),  appears  in  Edwards's  address.  Wright  may  have  taken  it 
from  him. 


37]  The  Service  of  Statistics  to  History.  37 

uses  the  results  of  statistical  enquiry  whenever  they  appear  to 
be  to  his  purpose,  just  as  he  might  use  the  results  of  any  other 
science ;  for  he  recognizes  that  if  he  wishes  fully  and  thoroughly 
to  understand  past  progress  in  every  direction,  he  must  take  all 
knowledge  to  be  his  province.  But  in  using  the  results  of 
statistical  enquiry,  he  employs  the  historical  and  not  the  statis- 
tical method. 

While,  however,  the  historian  uses  statistics  in  the  same  man- 
ner as  he  uses  the  facts  and  theories  of  other  sciences,  the 
circumstance  that  the  historical  and  the  statistical  methods 
both  find  their  most  fruitful  application  in  the  social  field, 
enables  the  statistician  to  furnish  historical  data  in  a  measure 
far  more  ample  than  will,  say,  the  astronomer,  or  the  chemist, 
or  the  embryologist.  How  frequently  the  historian  shall  find 
statistics  among  his  sources  will  depend  upon  the  direction  to 
be  taken  by  future  applications  of  the  statistical  method  on  the 
one  hand,  and  of  the  historical  method  on  the  other. 

If,  for  example,  Professor  Muensterberg,  having  perfected 
his  machinery  for  measuring  the  physical  reactions  of  individ- 
uals in  moral  predicaments,  shall  furnish  the  world  some  day, 
with  an  accurate  ethical  calibration  of  the  normal  American 
or  Teuton,  the  future  historian  will  be  greatly  concerned,  I  am 
sure,  to  ascertain  and  to  compare  with  the  type,  the  reaction 
record  of  the  fiftieth  President  of  the  United  States  and  the 
tenth  Emperor  of  Germany.  You  may  regard  the  illustration 
as  fantastic.  But  principles  appear  in  extremes.  What  tech- 
nical or  financial  obstacles  meanwhile  impede  the  collection  of 
such  statistics  as  the  historian  would  like  to  use  is  not  for  him 
to  say ;  but  he  may  selfishly  hope  that  the  American  Statistical 
Association  will  presently  succeed  in  overcoming  them  all. 

A  change  or  extension  in  the  subjects  of  history  might  also 
increase  the  availability  of  the  data  of  statistics  as  materials 
for  the  historian.  Freeman,  for  example,  has  declared  that 
"history  is  past  politics,  politics  is  present  history,"*  and 
Seeley  says  that  "it  is  with  the  origin  and  development  of 
states  that  history  deals,  "t  Their  dicta  voice  the  fashion  of 
their  day.  Other  times,  other  manners.  In  the  era  of  mili- 
tary feudalism,  historians  wrote  chronicles  of  camp  and  court. 

*E.  A.  Freeman.    Lectures  to  American  Audiences.    1882.    P.  20. 
frSir  J.  R.  Seeley.    The  Expansion  of  England.      1883.     P.  148. 


38  American  Statistical  Association.  [38 

The  Reformation  obliged  intelligent  men  to  become  more  or 
less  theologians,  and  from  Luther  to  Voltaire  ecclesiastical 
history  predominated.  The  revolutions  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury in  America  and  France  brought  new  subjects  of  histori- 
cal study  into  vogue.  Not  only  did  Guizot  and  Hallam  trace 
the  constitutional  development  of  France  and  of  England, 
writing  always  with  an  eye  upon  the  political  situation  in 
which  they  lived,  but  Grote  constructed  a  ponderous  History 
of  Greece  in  support  of  the  Victorian  Whigs,  and  Mommsen 
launched  a  learned  History  of  Rome  against  Napoleon  the 
Second. 

Observing  thus  how,  with  the  shifting  of  contemporary  inter- 
ests in  the  past,  the  historical  method  has  been  applied  (like 
the  statistical)  to  widely  diverse  subjects,  we  are  prepared  to 
find,  in  our  own  time,  that  the  increasing  pressure  of  social  and 
economic  problems,  into  which,  by  the  help  of  Darwin  and  of 
Marx,  we  seem  to  see  more  deeply  than  our  fathers  could,  must 
in  its  turn  induce  the  application  of  the  old  method  to  the  new 
stuff  of  social  and  economic  history.  And  since  the  subject 
matter  of  statistics  is  largely  social  and  economic,  the  future 
historian,  though  working  still  chiefly  in  the  old  way,  interest- 
ing himself,  among  other  things  in  the  personality  of  a  leader 
of  invention,  a  captain  of  industry,  a  freebooter  among  insur- 
ance companies  and  railways,  or  an  organizer  of  international 
peace,  may  make,  indeed  he  must  make  larger  and  larger  use 
of  the  statistics  that  are  and  of  the  statistics  that  are  to  be. 

Once  more  may  I  illustrate?  It  was  long  the  habit  of 
American  historians  to  attribute  our  prosperity  in  1789-1792 
to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  in  1788.  Of  recent  years, 
however,  it  has  been  more  generally  believed  that,  for  reasons 
altogether  independent  of  the  Philadelphia  Convention,  the 
tide  of  prosperity  was  already  swelling  in  1787,  and  that  the 
Constitution  was  borne  to  ratification  upon  its  rising  crest. 
This  later  view  is,  to  my  mind,  not  only  the  more  probable 
inherently,  but  also  the  better  supported  by  evidence;  and 
much  of  that  evidence  is  statistical.  It  is  here  characteristic, 
and  further  illustrative,  that  the  new  conclusion  was  not  the 
immediate  result  of  any  statistical  enquiry,  but  rather  of  a 
general  judgment,  such  as  historians  are  constantly  ponder- 
ing in  their  own  minds,  and  then  weighing  and  testing  by  all 


39]  The  Service  of  Statistics  to  History.  39 

appropriate  means.  In  this  case  the  chief  means  chanced  to 
be  statistical.  And  if,  incidentally,  some  historian,  in  dealing 
with  it,  has  fallen  into  a  trap  such  as  field  errors  in  statistics 
leave  ever  open  for  the  unwary,  and,  for  example,  has  assumed 
to  measure  the  growth  of  our  foreign  commerce  by  the  use  of 
figures  which  register,  in  part  at  least,  merely  the  increasing 
efficiency  of  the  newspapers  in  recording  the  entries  and  clear- 
ances of  A^essels,  that  blunder  proves,  to  my  mind,  not  that  the 
true  method  for  history  is  the  statistical  method,  but  merely 
that  the  historian  needs,  when  using  statistics  as  a  source,  just 
as  he  needs  when  using  a  scarab,  or  book  of  personal  reminis- 
cences, or  a  party  platform  as  a  source,  to  exercise  an  alert  and 
competent  criticism.  However,  the  extent  to  which,  being 
competent,  he  shall  use  statistical  sources,  or  some  other  sort 
of  sources,  must  depend  chiefly  upon  the  sort  of  things  with 
which,  as  a  historian,  he  shall  chose  to  deal  by  his  historical 
method. 

It  is  even  conceivable,  to  some  minds,  that  the  vogue  in 
history  may  at  length  alter  so  completely  as  to  eliminate 
altogether  the  element  of  personal  interest,  and  that  historians 
will  some  day  deal  solely  with  the  social  masses  that  statisti- 
cians have  measured.  General  Walker  will  then  appear  more 
of  a  historian,  even,  through  the  footed  columns  of  the  Tenth 
Census  than  through  the  footnotes  and  pages  of  ' '  The  Second 
Army  Corps,"  and  a  more  enlightened  age  will  find  in  the 
tables  and  diagrams  of  a  municipal  report  greater  historical 
eloquence  than  its  forbears  admired  in  Michelet.  Possible 
these  things  are :  to  me  they  do  not  seem  probable.  And  it  is 
plain  that  before  they  shall  come  te  pass,  ''history/'  as  a  term 
common  to  all  the  European  languages,  must  have  revolution- 
ized its  accepted  meaning.  Today,  being  no  prophet,  I  have 
endeavored  rather  to  deal  with  it  in  the  meaning  which  it 
seems  yet  to  possess. 

One  more  comment  and  I  am  done.  If  any  one  of  you  is 
disposed  to  feel  that  even  in  their  own  way  historians  have 
made  but  grudging  use  of  statistics,  I  beseech  him  to  reflect, 
first,  how  difficult  it  is  to  get  statistics  read — not  intelligently, 
but  at  all — and,  second,  how  small  is  the  fraction  of  historical 
time  for  which  statistics  give  any  appreciable  variety  of  infor- 
mation. 


